Churned Logos

What it measures

The raw count of distinct legal entities that held an active contract during the period but whose recurring revenue reached zero through full cancellation by period-end. It is blind to contract size — a $500/month customer and a $50K/month customer each count as one churned logo. Downgrades, seat reductions, partial cancellations, and failed payments are excluded; only full-account terminations to zero recurring revenue count.

Why it matters

Churned Logos is the heartbeat of retention — the absolute human count of customers walking out the door, independent of how big they were. You track it because it is the raw numerator of every churn rate: losing 5 logos and adding 5 leaves Total Logos flat while your base is completely unstable. Sales and marketing watch it because no acquisition velocity can outscale a business that bleeds customers faster than it signs them; product uses it to prioritize retention; finance feeds it into customer-count forecasts and lifetime models, where churning 5 of 50 new logos means you net 45 while CAC payback keeps ticking on the 5 who left.

How to read it

Read Churned Logos as the absolute number of customers who left this period, but never as a bare count — always normalize it. Divide by starting logos to get the logo churn rate: 2 churned logos looks safe until you learn the base was 20 (10% churn — a disaster), and a 2% monthly rate is sustainable while 10% shrinks your base by a tenth every month before any new growth. Pair it with New Customer Logos to see net movement: adding 10 and losing 8 is healthier than adding 5 and losing 3 (one shows strength, the other masks churn). Then decompose why it moved — did one anchor account leave, or is there broad erosion? Drill into cohort and ACV band: small customers churning while large ones stick is normal; your largest accounts leaving is a red flag.

What good looks like

Watch-outs

• Counting downgrades as churn. A customer who downgrades from Enterprise to Starter remains active with recurring revenue above $0 and is not churned — only full terminations to zero recurring revenue count. Downgrades belong in Downsell MRR, not Churned Logos.
• Conflating logo churn with revenue churn. 5 churned logos (a low count) might be 25% of ARR if those were your biggest accounts — always read Churned Logos alongside Churned ARR and Churned MRR to know whether you lost your smallest or your most profitable customers.
• Reporting net movement instead of gross churn. Adding 10 logos and losing 3 nets +7, but Churned Logos is still 3 — reporting only the net hides the underlying churn risk and the instability of the base.
• Ignoring churn timing and cohort age. Record churn on the effective end date, not at convenience, or reporting lags distort the figure. A fresh cohort may churn 10% in month one then 1% monthly after; a single aggregate count masks this, so segment by cohort age, geography, or ACV band.

Worked example